Adding to my post yesterday about the massive anime-eyed youth in China, it got me thinking about eyes and the way eyes are used in expression and in gauging emotion in China.  It reminded me of a BBC article I read a few months ago about how facial expressions are not global.

A study conducted by the University of Glasgow suggests that people from different cultures read facial expressions differently.  Using eye movement trackers, they noticed that East Asian participants in the study focused mostly on the eyes, whereas those from the West scanned the whole face.  The East Asian participants were more likely to read “fear” as “surprise” and “disgust” as “anger”.

When you think about it even in internet-terms, emoticons are indeed different in the Western world versus in Asia.  Take for example…

Happiness
In the West, the happy face would look like this –>  :-)
But in Asia, the happy face looks like this –> (^_^)

There’s such a marked difference between the two.  In the Asian version, the eyes are up and squinting happily… and one can tell that this means happiness, despite the neutral mouth.  Versus the Western version where the eyes are neutral, but the mouth is the main focus.

Take a look at these other examples:

Sadness
In the West –>  :-(
In Asia, the eyes are tearing –> (;_;) or (T_T)
(both the above depict tears falling from the eyes)

Surprise or shock
In the West –>  :-o
In Asia –> (o.o)

Perhaps this innate focus on the eyes is why these Chinese youth are paying so much attention to them and are trying to make them as big and as expressive as possible.  Perhaps it is also why the Japanese created anime characters with eyes that take up almost half their faces, but coupled with the tinniest, simplest of mouths… (see below!)

In any case (and as I’m sure you already know) it is just good to be aware, when conducting business overseas, or just interacting with others from different countries, that the differences in cultural interaction can be extremely subtle and that what you may perceive as one expression or emotion may not actually be so.

Quite a few discussion forums (especially the techie ones!) have been buzzing recently about the Japanese man who married an anime game character.  Boing Boing reported that “a man named Sal9000 married the love of his life. Her name is Nene Anegasaki, and she lives inside of a Nintendo DS video game called Love Plus.”

See Boing Boing’s recap of it on YouTube:

It’s clear that people are fascinated by this, as this YouTube video received well over 1.5 million hits!

A few months ago, the New York Times had published a telling article about this phenomenon called “Love in 2-D”, describing a thriving subculture of men and women in Japan who indulge in real relationships with imaginary characters.

Featured was a man named Nisan, who fell in love with an anime character (named Nemutan)  printed on a body pillow (pictured below). Says the NY Times reporter who spent a day interviewing him:  ”He treats her the way any decent man would treat a girlfriend — he takes her out on the weekends to sing karaoke or take purikura, photo-booth pictures imprinted on a sheet of tiny stickers.”

There’s a name for the obsessive fandom surrounding the anime, manga and video game culture: Otaku.

Continues the reporter: “It’s impossible to say exactly what portion of otaku are 2-D lovers, because the distinction between the two can be blurry. Like most otaku, the majority of 2-D lovers go to work, pay rent, hang out with friends (some are even married). Unlike most otaku, though, they have real romantic feelings for their toys. The less extreme might have a hidden collection of figurines based on anime characters that they go on “dates” with during off hours. A more serious 2-D lover, like Nisan, actually believes that a lumpy pillow with a drawing of an anime character on it is his girlfriend.

According to many who study the phenomenon, the rise of 2-D love can be attributed in part to the difficulty many young Japanese have in navigating modern romantic life.”

To read the entire fascinating NYtimes article, click here.